There is some confusion in the use of the term "West Midlands", as the name is also used for the much smaller West Midlands county and conurbation which is in the central belt of the Midlands and on the eastern side of the West Midlands Region. It is also still used by various organisations within that area, such as West Midlands Police and West Midlands Fire Service.

The highest point in the region is Black Mountain, at 703 metres (2,307 ft) in west Herefordshire on the border with Powys, Wales.

The longest elevated road viaduct in the UK is the 3 miles (4,779 m) section from Gravelly Hill to Castle Bromwich on the M6, opened on 24 May 1972; the 3.5 miles (5.6 km) Bromford Viaduct is the longest viaduct in the UK. The section of the A45 in Coventry from Willenhall to Allesley in 1939 was one of the UK's first ever large planned road schemes; road schemes on that scale had not been previously built, with few large road schemes outside of London, or were piecemeal.

Princes Square in Wolverhampton had Britain's first automatic traffic lights on 5 November 1927.[1] On 13 January 2012, 34-year-old Ben Westwood of Wednesfield, was caught by the police, when speeding at 180 mph, in an Audi RS5 with a Lamborghini engine, from Wolverhampton up to Stafford on the M6, and back again. He was travelling so fast that he was outpacing the Central Counties Air Operations UnitEurocopter helicopter. He and the vehicle had been in fifteen smash and grab raids and he was jailed for nine years at Wolverhampton Crown Court in August 2012.[2]

The M45 motorway, originally called the Dunchurch Link, was one of the first motorways built in the UK, and is now one of the quietest

As part of the transport planning system, the Regional Assembly is under statutory requirement to produce a regional transport strategy (RTS) to provide long term planning for transport in the region. This involves region wide transport schemes such as those carried out by Highways England and Network Rail.[3]

James Glaisher in 1862 took a record balloon flight with Henry Tracey Coxwell for the BAAS near Wolverhampton. They reached 29,000 feet (8,800 m) the composition of the Earth's atmosphere until then was not understood; the altitude records for the UK have not been exceeded since; Project Excelsior in the US in 1960 would later reach 20 miles (110,000 ft).

Philip Lawley of Burton upon Trent was first person to realise that chemical damage to DNA caused cancer (at the Chester Beatty Research Institute in London) in the early 1960s.

Alexander Parkes invented the first man-made plastic (thermoplastic) in Birmingham in 1856. Arthur Leslie Large of Birmingham is credited with inventing the kettle in 1922. Princess Square, Wolverhampton, was the site of Britain's first traffic lights in 1927. Infra-red cameras were developed at the Royal Radar Establishment in Malvern (with EMI Electronics) in 1967. The world's first Maglev train operated Birmingham Airport in 1983. The tallest freestanding structure in the region is the chimney of Ironbridge power station at 673 ft. John Baskerville of Birmingham, a former stone carver, largely invented fonts, or typefaces, for printing.

Much of the UK's car industry would be centred in Coventry and Birmingham; most of this has now gone. Midland Motor Cylinder (part of Birmid Industries) of Smethwick was the largest producer of automobile cylinder blocks in Europe. Fort Dunlop was Europe's largest tyre plant. Metro Cammell in Birmingham made most of the 1970s and 1980s LU underground trains. The MG Rover (a company of Rover) closed in 2005 (from 1885), The Ryton plant, which made the 206, closed at the end of 2006, with production moving to Trnava in Slovakia, and some to a plant at Kolín in the Czech Republic. Alfred Herbert of Coventry was the largest machine-tool manufacturer in the UK for many decades; it was brought down in the 1970s by advancing technology overseas, and complacent strategic decisions of the management (caught like a rabbit in the headlights), finally closing in 1982; many Midlands manufacturing companies followed similar fates in the 1970s and 1980s. Tube Investments was based at Tube Investments House, Five Ways, Edgbaston (now a Marriott hotel).

1817 Boulton & Watt beam blowing engine re-erected on the Dartmouth Circus roundabout, on the A4540 and the A38(M)

Henry Wiggin & Co of Hereford developed the metal alloys necessary for other Midlands' (and beyond) automotive and aerospace companies – Inconel, Incoloy and Nimonic. It was the lack of vanadium for high-melting point alloys, caused by Royal Navy action, that prevented German Me 262 engines being serviceable; had German World War 2 engineers had a greater supply of vanadium and molybdenum, the engine life (around 12 hours maximum, from entering service in April 1944 to the end of the war) of their jet engine would have increased much more, which would have been significant to the war's outcome. Bristol Siddeley developed the rocket engines for Black Arrow at Ansty; in fact all of R-R's rocket engines were developed and built there at R-R's Industrial and Marine Gas Turbine Division; Britain's smaller rocket engines for missiles were built by Bristol Aerojet in what is now North Somerset. High Duty Alloys at Redditch constructed (forged) the compressor and turbine blades for Whittle's first engines, and many of the early jet engines; it made Concorde's airframe from the Hiduminium R.R.58 aluminium alloy.

This section needs to be updated. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(October 2014)

The official representative body of the region is the West Midlands Leaders Board which has limited administrative functions such as regional planning and economic development. The board is not an elected body, but is made up of members appointed from local councils across the region and is known as a quango. It is based on Edward Street in Birmingham, near the National Indoor Arena. From March 2010, the funding decisions at regional level were taken over by Advantage West Midlands, the Regional Development Agency.

How the West Midlands region voted in the June 2016 European Union referendum; only the (university) district of Warwick voted (58.8%) to stay in the EU; the region had the highest overall vote (59.3%) to leave, with large proportions in Stoke-on-Trent (69.4%) and Cannock Chase (68.9%)

The West Midlands is the second most ethnically diverse region of the UK (London being the most diverse). This is in large part due to the West Midlands conurbation, which is highly diverse. The ethnic makeup of the West Midlands as a whole as measured by the 2011 census was as follows:

For top-tier authorities in the West Midlands, Stoke-on-Trent has the highest teenage pregnancy rate. For council districts, Nuneaton and Bedworth in Warwickshire has the highest rate closely followed by Tamworth. For top-tier authorities, Shropshire has the lowest rate, and for council districts Malvern Hills has the lowest rate.

The region, from studies of multiple deprivation, shows similarities with Yorkshire and the Humber, and is more deprived than the neighbouring East Midlands. From the Indices of deprivation 2007, it can be seen that, in common with Northern England, the region has more Lower Area Super Output Areas in the 20% most deprived districts than in the 20% least deprived districts.[18] The region's most deprived council districts, in descending order, are Birmingham (10th highest in England), Sandwell (14th), Stoke-on-Trent (16th), Wolverhampton (28th), Walsall (45th), Coventry (61st), and Dudley (100th). These have Labour MPs except for a Conservative MP in Walsall, one in Sandwell, one in Dudley, and one in Wolverhampton (Wolverhampton South West)[19]

The least deprived districts in 2007 (before Shropshire became a unitary authority in 2009) were Bromsgrove, South Staffordshire, Warwick, Wychavon, and Lichfield. These areas, like all rural areas of the West Midlands, have Conservative MPs. At county level, the least deprived areas, in descending order, were Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Solihull, Staffordshire, and Shropshire.

In March 2011 the region had the second highest overall unemployment claimant count in England at 4.7%, second to North East England. The highest in the region was Wolverhampton at 7.7%, the joint second highest (with Manchester) unemployment rate in England. Next is Sandwell with 7.1%, Birmingham with 7.0%, and Walsall with 6.4%. The lowest rate in the region is the district of Stratford-on-Avon, with 1.6% – one of the lowest unemployment rates in England.[20]

The Green Party of England and Wales was formed at the Bridge Inn in Napton-on-the-Hill, Warwickshire, in February 1973,
and originated from an article by Paul R. Ehrlich about population growth in Playboy magazine; it became the Ecology Party in 1975 and the Green Party in 1985; the first conference was in June 1973 at The Allesley Hotel at the A4114/A45 junction south of the main Jaguar works in Allesley, in west Coventry.

In the 2015 general election, the Conservatives gained the largest share of the region by popular vote and took control of the number of seats, with 42% of the region's electorate voting Conservative, 33% Labour, 16% UKIP, 6% Liberal Democrat and 3% Green. The Conservatives gained 2 seats with virtually no swing from Labour to Conservative.

Although having a slightly smaller percentage of the vote than the neighbouring East Midlands, the geographic area of the West Midlands is more Conservative, due to Labour's vote now consigned to the urban areas of Birmingham, Coventry and Stoke-on-Trent. The number of seats is more favoured towards Labour than the geographic spread, with 35 Conservative seats and 24 Labour. All of Warwickshire, Staffordshire (except Newcastle-under-Lyme), Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Shropshire is now Conservative.

The West Midlands' population accounts for almost 11% of England's overall population. 49.36% of the region's population resides in the West Midlands county, 20.17% in Staffordshire, 10.49% in Worcestershire, 9.91% in Warwickshire, 8.56% in Shropshire, and 3.37% in Herefordshire.

The UK headquarters of Alstom Grid (former Areva T&D UK, and GEC) is based in Stafford as well as a factory and the UK headquarters of Bostik (a subsidiary of TOTAL). Alstom Power repair electrical generators. Altecnic, who work with Caleffi of Italy, is in the north of Stafford in Creswell, off M6 junction 14, and supply plumbing fittings. MICROMINIATURES on the B5026 in Stone claim to be Europe's leading supplier of ice cream van chime equipment.

On the Balliol Business Park, in Bilbrook and directly west of Fordhouses in Wolverhampton north of Pendeford, Cargill process poultry (with another site at Hereford), and next door is Moog Aircraft (GE Aviation Systems before September 2009, which had bought Smiths Aerospace in May 2007) which makes flight control actuation systems (for the hydraulics on Boeing and Airbus), to move to the I54 Business Park in Bilbrook; the Balliol Business Park was formerly the site of Boulton Paul Aircraft, that made the Defiant.

Selective schools are in low numbers as follows: Birmingham (8), Walsall (2), Wolverhampton (1), Warwickshire (6), Stoke-on-Trent (1), and Telford and Wrekin (2). The highest proportion per head therefore is Warwickshire (its population is between 550,000 and 600,000 people). The other counties and metropolitan boroughs have none, their public education systems are comprehensive in intake. The grammar and independent schools tend to produce pass-rate examination results among the top twenty ranked regionally. Many pupils compete for entrance examinations to attend such long-established Grammar Schools and most have significant parent sponsorship. In 2016 two of the top ten such schools nationally were in Warwickshire, where in the CV37 postal district prices were 34% higher than the county as a whole.[83] The top 20 schools at A-level rarely change from year to year; slightly lower in the table pass-rate boosts and top grades regularly occur among the schools receiving industrial funding, with similar frequency to London, the North East, and the North West, particularly in schools and academies which have some of the most advanced facilities.

Around 275,000 secondary schools are in the region, the greatest number after the South East, Greater London and North West.

At GCSE based on % of entrants' pass rates, the best performing local government area in 2010 was Solihull, closely followed by Warwickshire and Shropshire. Dudley, Herefordshire, Telford and Wrekin, Birmingham and Staffordshire (in descending order) are above the English average, at which rate, is approximately Worcestershire. The area consistently having fewest passes is Sandwell, followed by Stoke-on-Trent. Struggling pupils in Wolverhampton and Walsall also attain fewer passes than the English average in most GCSE years, sometimes by a very narrow margin. For metropolitan boroughs, Solihull then Dudley perform best. Dudley is the best metropolitan borough at A-level passes and has a consistent post-2000 history of being better than Solihull.

Schools have been offrolling pupils. Pupils likely to do badly in examinations are expelled before the examinations to improve the school performance in league tables. Expelled pupils then disproportionately get involved in gangs and in crime. Knife crime in the West Midlands is the highest outside London.[84]

At A-level in 2010, the consistently best performing area was Herefordshire where most A-level candidates attend Hereford sixth form college. Dudley is also above the English average; the other metropolitan boroughs have low-to-average A-level pass or high mark proportions. Shropshire is at the English average.

Regionally in persistent truancy at secondary school, Sandwell had the highest rate at 6.9%; Bromsgrove had the lowest at 2.3%.[85]

The University of Birmingham is the main university in the region[88] and has the most funding. It has a large research grant, as does the University of Warwick, which is the next largest in terms of funding. Birmingham and Warwick are members of the Russell Group of public research universities. Keele and Aston have a moderate research grant, but none of the other universities do. Keele, although having the largest campus in the UK (by area), is one of the smallest universities in the region. There are medical schools are at Warwick, Keele and Birmingham. Birmingham and Warwick receive more than twice as much total income than any other university in the region – around £400 million each.

For students in the region, around 45% are from the region, and 35% from other regions. The other region with the most native students in the region is South East England (good access via the M40 and the West Coast Main Line), but there is a good mix of students from other regions, except the North East (especially) and Yorkshire.

Students native to the West Midlands are most likely to study in the region (40%), then the East Midlands (12%), the North West (11%), and then Yorkshire (9%). Very few go to the East of England or the North East. The region has a net export of university students to other regions.

Once graduated, almost 60% of graduates stay in the region, with 10% going to London, 7% to the South-East, and around 5% to the East Midlands. Very few go to Yorkshire, the North-East, or even (neighbouring) Wales.